also treat your child like a blessing not like there is something wrong that is the best therapy in the world and with this they will thrive.

I do treat my child like a blessing. That's why I don't want to see him hurt. It has nothing to do with not loving or cherishing my son. "They can be very smart" is not much of a comfort, I'm afraid. It's not what *I* want. It's not that I want to say "my son is smart". Intelligence has nothing to do with it. It has to do with *his happiness*. And I can tell you right now that autistic children are smart...you are right...smart enough to know that they are different, that they are uncomfortable doing many of the same things as other children, that strange things freak them out, that they have obsessions they absolutely can not control.

It is not for MY sake that I worry about my son. I don't see why you would feel based on my posts that I don't think my child is a blessing. As for not treating him like something is wrong, newsflash: something IS wrong. If he had cancer, I sure as heck wouldn't treat him like nothing was wrong. I would do something about it.

"Treat(ing) your child like a blessing...is the best therapy in the world..." If only. Please. If loving, caring for, paying attention to, crying for, crying with, holding, attachment parenting, and spending about 23.5 of every 24 hours focusing entirely on a child were "the best therapy," my child would not only be talking, he'd be reciting the Gettysburg Address by now and penning his very first thesis.

Platitudes are nice but they aren't keeping at least one stranger every shopping trip from throwing poison-dart glares at my apparently "misbehaving" son or outright making nasty comments, loudly, at and to him. (Most recently it was a cashier saying, "Don't be such a crybaby! Why are you a crybaby? We don't cry in this store!")

I really wish by now that I had never asked for help at all on the vax issue since it has brought out of the woodwork plenty of people who have decided that either my ideas are bogus, or that I don't cherish my child enough. People, please. If you could come to my house and see how much of our world revolves entirely around this child who we cry for every day as he encounters stumbling block after stumbling block and nasty comment after nasty comment, you might think before you post.

To those of you who addressed the actual questions, thank you so much. I have signed up for two groups...one for HFA and one for apraxia of speech. I hope to meet up with other moms who actually understand, like you do. 99% of the time I encounter scepticism, condemnation and/or erroneous commentary, as you can see. It sucks. Big time. It sucks to have to fight each and every day to be understood.